How Little, How Big
by J. M. Flowers
Summary: An eleven year old Sofia learns the truth about her mama's amputation.


**How Little, How Big**

It had been a presumptuous girl that'd been the one to ask, pointing crudely at the hunk of metal that peeked out from the gap between shoe and denim that had caught when her Mama climbed out of the car to wave goodbye. The silver of prosthetic ankle glinted angrily in the sunlight, yelling across the playground to a spattering of eleven year old eyes.

_Somebody is different._

The girl who asked stood in the way of her path towards the door, dark red hair hanging in two braided pigtails on either side of her face. She looked like the type of girl who'd be popular as soon as they set foot inside the school, earning herself a league of little followers before they even found their seats, giggling raucously when someone dropped their books. It was reason enough for a bubble of something rancid to hiccup in Sofia's stomach. The unwavering sureness of her question was an added bonus.

"What's that?"

Eleven years old and as tough as the stories of her mami in her younger years, Sofia rolled her eyes. Bailey had told her enough times of the strength of one furrowed brow, how a well-timed glare had been capable of sending interns fleeing from one Dr. Torres' side. She steeled herself, tried a crunching of her features. "It's a prosthesis," she muttered.

The girl was a little too brave for her liking.

"Why does she have that?"

Sofia crunched her lip between her teeth, chanced a look back at her mama, who'd yet to notice that her jeans had hooked on one of the hinges of her leg. She was watching their exchange with a tentative smile, her anxiety over her daughter's first day of junior high still obvious in the jittering of her hands. The plan hadn't been for it to be just the two of them: Mami was meant to be standing beside her, holding her up and being strong so Sofia didn't have to give a nod of reassurance. But Callie had been called into a surgery before they'd even finished making breakfast and all she'd been able to offer was a kiss pressed into her temple and a promise to pick her up after school.

She took a deep breath before she turned back to the other girl. "Because she only has one leg."

The girl gasped, sending another rumble through the pit of Sofia's stomach. Something burned a path up the center of her chest and when it reached her tongue she couldn't help but think it tasted a little bit like anger. A little bit like a need to reach out and wrap a hand around the girl's pigtails, maybe yank them a little harder than really necessary.

"Why does she only have one leg?"

Anything to make her shut up.

"She's an amputee," she answered brusquely, pushing past to continue on her trek up the stairs, but the girl spoke again, loud enough to turn a few more heads.

"They cut off her leg?!"

Sofia whirled around on her heel, hands clenching into fists. Her eyes registered the swish of a braid, but her arms moved faster than her mind and instead of grabbing hair, she felt her fingers connect sickeningly with a nose.

When she pulled her hand away, it was tinged with red as dark as the other girls hair and the bubbling in her stomach had burst into a pit of flames.

#

_She'd puked the first time she saw it; the jagged edges of skin burning her eyes as the sharp fire of stomach acid charred her throat. The bile landed in her lap, wet heat attempting to blur the scars. She'd choked back a sob, another gag, pretending she didn't want to scream._

_ She did anyways: so loud that nurses ran full tilt into her room; long enough that they prepared a needle to numb her back to sleep. She'd protested only long enough for someone to wipe a towel across the top of her legs, tipping backwards from consciousness quickly afterwards._

_ With her eyes closed, puke had tasted like blood and chatter in the hallway had sounded like far off helicopters and the IV stabbed into her veins had felt a little like the grasp of Mark Sloan. _

#

"I want to go home," Sofia whimpered, shock over the situation tearing away the strength she'd worn earlier. She'd punched a girl and been suspended - on her first day of school. The sudden weight of it all made her curl into herself.

Arizona shook her head, eyes never leaving the road. "Nope, I need to go in to work and so you're coming with me, and when Mami's done her shift you can go home with her."

Sofia whimpered again, tears spilling over her cheeks. "I didn't mean to, Mama," she whispered, "I don't know what happened." She hadn't even known the girl's name.

"You broke Carly's nose, Sofia," Arizona chastised, "That's not okay. You know better than that."

A sniffle pulled Arizona's attention from the road, her demeanor softening slightly and her right hand reaching out to stroke the hair off her daughter's face. "Do you want to talk about it?" she asked, "What did she say to you?"

Sofia quickly turned away, glancing back out the passenger window. The last thing she wanted to do was talk to her mama about all of this; the one thing her mama _never_ talked about. "I just want to go home," she mumbled.

#

Callie was there to meet them in the lobby, swooping in to play good mom when she saw their daughter's tears. She tugged Sofia into a hug, frowning when she began to sob against her chest. "What happened, m'ija?" she asked softly, rocking her back and forth.

"I punched Carly," Sofia hiccupped into their embrace, "And I broke her nose and Mr. Booker suspended me for two days because they don't tolerate that kind of behaviour in junior high, and- and-" She took another shuddering breath, more tears escaping as her mami pulled away to study her face. "I didn't mean to, Mami," she whispered, swiping at her cheeks.

"Why did you punch her?" Callie asked, looking to her wife who shrugged, equally stumped. But that only made Sofia cry harder, her eyes flicking to her mama in complete uncertainty.

The beeping of a pager saved her from having to continue.

"It's mine," Arizona said, eyes shifting between her wife and daughter, "I have to go."

"It's okay," Callie promised, "I've got this."

#

_"It's okay," Callie had promised, stroking sweat and tear soaked blonde hair off her face, rocking her gently as she clutched her to her chest. _

_ "I can't -" she'd hiccupped, "I can't."_

_ "You can," Callie insisted, steadying her on her feet. "This is just one day."_

_ She glanced downwards to the newly fitted prosthesis pinching at her leg (no, stump), tears welling in her eyes at the metal replacing what was once toned and tanned flesh. She swallowed the lump in her throat. "I'm never going to be the same," she whispered, "How can I be a mom and a wife when I only have one leg?"_

_ Callie shook her head. "You have two. You have two legs, and you're still my beautiful wife and you're still Sofia's mother and all you have to do is try. All you have to do is let us love you."_

_ She pinched her eyes shut, dipping her head into the curve of Callie's neck, tired beyond belief. It wasn't supposed to be this hard._

#

It wasn't supposed to be so hard. Her mami was looking at her, begging for the real story, and the words were clamming up inside her throat. She didn't know how to voice the questions Carly had asked, when they were questions she struggled with so greatly on her own. She only knew the basics; she didn't know _why_ they'd cut her Mama's leg off or what the scars hidden in the prosthesis looked like or even if her mama missed her leg like Mami sometimes missed her Dad. She only knew that things were gone, and it wasn't something they talked about.

They talked about her father: how he was up in heaven with the love of his life and the two of them were always looking after her (just like her Uncle Timothy and Nick and her Abuela Torres), how much he'd loved her and cared for her, and tried so hard to live for her. And she knew about the car crash that had prompted her birth, why there was a scar in the center of her chest that matched the one on Mami's. She knew Mama had made her heart beat, knew she was some sort of superhero that found a little bit of strength in the way a blanket could hide a residual limb.

She shrugged at her mami's question, closing her eyes and letting heartbeat fill her ears. She let the soft curves of her mami's torso and the worn cushions of her office couch take her back in time to when the missing answers didn't matter so much. When she was five years old and she could sleep an entire afternoon away in Mami's office.

She wanted to be five years old again.

#

"She's asleep," Callie said, watching her wife carefully scrub out of her surgery, subconsciously leaning heavier on her right leg. "She wouldn't tell me what happened."

"You know," Arizona offered wistfully, "Once upon a time we would've pointed fingers at Mark for something like this."

Callie smirked. "Wouldn't that be so much easier? 'Sofia,'" she asked thin air, "'Why did you stick a pea up your nose?'"

"Mark," Arizona answered, chuckling. "'Sofia, why did you try to jump over the sidewalk with your bike?'"

"'Why did you punch a girl in the face on your first day of school?'"

Arizona shook her head. "Mark."

Callie sighed, leaning back against the door.

"I don't know what to do," Arizona whispered, dropping her towel into the waste bin. "Do we punish her for something so out of character? Or do we take her home and see if she finally tells us what the hell Carly said to make her do it, because you know she'd never hurt anyone without good reason."

"What did you see?" Callie asked softly, running a hand along her wife's arm.

Arizona shrugged. "They were just talking, it seemed harmless. Sofia kept looking back at me, I figured she was nervous or something. And then she tried to walk away from the girl, but she turned back and just punched her. By the time I got to them, Sofia was crying and Carly was bleeding, they were both so shaken. I've never seen an eleven year old hit so hard."

#

"What did Carly say about Mama," Callie asked as soon as she turned off the car, halting Sofia's movements to open the door. She turned slowly, big brown eyes briefly making eye contact before flicking to the floor.

"How did you know?" she whispered, twisting her hands in her lap.

Callie didn't answer.

"Her prosthesis was showing when she got out of the car," she breathed, "And everyone saw and Carly wouldn't stop asking questions and I didn't know the answers, Mami. I don't know anything about why Mama's leg's gone so what am I supposed to say when the other kids ask about it?"

Callie reached forward to wipe the newly falling trail of tears from her daughter's face, biting her lip as Arizona's car pulled into the driveway behind them. "I don't know the answers, either, Sof," she said softly, a sudden weight of emotion dragging their conversation down a few decibels.

Sofia glanced towards the rearview mirror, studying the weary limp of her Mama making her way up the driveway. She let her eyes fall to the telltale push of metal kneecap against her jeans, imagining the feel of it beneath her fingertips, the picture of it burned into her eyelids. She'd spent enough summer afternoons studying it while her mama slept on the couch, running her fingers along it in the only times when she couldn't possibly be told to keep her hands to herself. She'd never had reason to be afraid of it, it was more the quivering of her mama's lips that scared her. It was her mama's leg, it always had been in her mind, but she saw the wince that graced her face when people stared and she'd never wanted to be the cause of that look. So she'd left it an unspoken truth, hidden under jeans and dress pants and scrubs, something only she could see. Something she could never speak.

"Can I ask Mama?" she asked softly, fearful when she looked back to her mami for an answer, "Or will she get mad at me, like I did when Carly asked?"

Callie lifted her head, glancing towards the front door where Arizona was now turning her key in the lock. She looked over her shoulder for a moment, the two of them making eye contact through the windshield, a brief smile lifting the corners of her mouth and allowing dimples to peek around the edges of her laugh lines.

"You can ask her," Callie whispered, "She has to let you love her."

#

_The room feels heavy on her chest. Like there's a toddler sitting on her sternum. Like there's Mark's lifeless body in her lap. Like she's fallen on the cold tile of the bathroom and she can't get up. _

_ Except she's on her foot and her lungs are expanding and little Sofia is standing in the doorway. And she's not yet two and her head is not yet as high as a waist and the prosthesis is not yet hiding scars and somehow she is running full tilt for a hug._

_ Sofia smacks into her mama's legs, wraps her arms around shaking thighs, presses morning kisses wherever she can reach. Her lips tickle against convoluted skin. She giggles._

_ "Love you, Mama," she squeals delightedly. _

_ Her chest bursts open. She lowers herself to the ground. She pulls her daughter into her arms and shakes with tears. She lets Sofia love her, just like Callie said. It hurts less than she expected. _

#

She expected a lot of tears - from herself more than anyone else. She'd been a leaky faucet since she threw that punch, and yet when her mama sat down in front of her on the couch she'd dried right up. Hadn't even flinched when her mami began rubbing circles on her back.

"You were in a plane crash, with Daddy," she prompted carefully, watching for the wince that didn't come. Instead her mothers smiled over her head.

"A trip from Seattle to Boise, to help separate conjoined twins. There were six doctors on board: one was in love with your father; one a sister; a husband; a best friend; one was your dad; and the sixth was me. Our plane fell apart in the sky, crashing into a mountain below. We spent four days in the woods, waiting to be rescued.

"I broke my femur in the crash, and by the time we made it home, it was badly infected. I begged Mami to try to save it, and she did try, but septic shock set in."

She swallowed hard, studying her mama's face before glancing behind herself to her other mother. "She was dying," she stated softly, grabbing at her mami's hand. She held tight, fervently, squeezing when she received a silent yes.

"The only way to save my life was to amputate."

"So I told them to cut it off," Callie whispered.

Sofia faltered briefly, looked to her mami and then her mama, searching for the acceptance that settled into their eyes. She remembered the hurt and the screaming, however vague it may have been: the yelled frustrations of a woman who couldn't do what she wanted. And though she hadn't always understood, she got it now in the breath of a second. She saw it.

And it wasn't the trailing of fingers across a healed scar, or videotapes of a parent she doesn't quite remember, or seeing tears on a mother's face. It was the strength in their eyes. It was the carrying on. It was living.

Carly didn't understand, but that was okay. Not everyone understood the missing pieces - no one was meant to - it was the visible strength that they were trying to grab hold of. The prosthesis was a conquering. Carly's questions were a step between parallel bars, an extra lap around the room.

They weren't different: they just wore their strengths a little louder.


End file.
